I. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to communication, and more specifically to techniques for requesting for radio resources in a wireless communication system.
II. Background
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, etc. These wireless systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting multiple users by sharing the available system resources. Examples of such multiple-access systems include Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) systems, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) systems, Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) systems, Orthogonal FDMA (OFDMA) systems, and Single-Carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) systems.
A wireless communication system may include many base stations that can support communication for many terminals on the forward and reverse links. The forward link (or downlink) refers to the communication link from the base stations to the terminals, and the reverse link (or uplink) refers to the communication link from the terminals to the base stations. The system may utilize a resource assignment scheme in which a terminal may send a request for radio resources whenever the terminal has data to send on the reverse link. In general, radio resources may include time, frequency, code, power, and/or other types of resources usable for transmission. A base station may process the resource request from the terminal and may send a grant of radio resources to the terminal. The terminal may then transmit data on the reverse link using the granted resources. Reverse link resources are consumed to send resource requests. There is therefore a need in the art for techniques to efficiently send resource requests.